It was great to see all who could make it to the Zimmet conference, where we celebrated the launch of Park Place! The mobile-friendly site will be launched shortly. In the meantime, this post will be updated with the Park Place link as soon as it’s live.
Programming note: There will be no Digest next week. We will return Monday, September 1st.
WHITE HOUSE:
The White House focused this week on deregulation in the space industry, extending a suspension of higher tariffs on China, and providing more context, via a Council of Economic Advisors report (PDF), on last week’s Executive Order that directed the government to explore adding crypto, private equity, and other alternative investments into retirement accounts. Two items of indirect interest:
- The President signed a new Executive Order directing the Strategic Active Pharmaceutical Ingredients Reserve (SAPIR) to identify and start stockpiling the ingredients for 26 medicines the agency deems “essential”. The goal is to strengthen the domestic supply chain for medicines and boost US manufacturing of these ingredients. In theory, this should reduce the cost and ensure a more adequate supply of the chosen medicines. The full text of the EO is here.
CONGRESS:
As the summer moves on, and Congress remains on recess, it’s been fairly quiet on the government funding deadline push. The President even weighed in, stating that he’d be meeting with Democratic leadership, although he wasn’t optimistic that it would help. Adding to the complexity is a GOP push by conservative House members to do another Reconciliation bill, an effort that isn’t supported by the Senate and would minimize any desire by Democrats to work with the GOP on funding the government. With more Republican members willing to use arcane procedural tools to circumvent the Speaker’s authority, it’s going to be an interesting few weeks when Congress gets back. For now, it’s the dog days of summer on the Hill. Elsewhere in DC:
- California made its boldest statement yet in the Democratic fight against Texas’ redistricting effort. While not yet officially announced (as of the time of this writing), the proposed map would shift many Republican districts into Democratic hands and negate the Texas redistricting push.
- States are picking up on the MAHA agenda, with nearly 900 (!) MAHA-aligned state legislative proposals already introduced.
- Congressional members are continuing to head for the hills, with 9 Senators and 21 House members already announcing plans to move on from their current seat.
- Fairly wonky and likely only of interest to political junkies, but with redistricting all the rage right now, the CRS put out a report on mid-decade redistricting and just how unusual it is.
AGENCIES:
CMS announced that they are pausing the Care Compare site refreshes through October, owing to their internal transition to a new cloud-based system. The QSO is here (PDF).
The first domino in the government’s AI action plan has fallen, with the GSA launching a new federal set of tools to enable federal agencies to tap into generative AI. For now, the goal is for the GSA to test the various available models and eventually deploy them more to scale across the different agencies.
It’s not official yet, but reports are emerging that a new proposed rule that would overhaul how H1-B visas are awarded cleared the White House’s Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs (OIRA) office, typically the final step before being issued. The expectation is that the rule would change the H1-B process from a lottery to a more weighted system tied to wages.
The OIG at HHS performed an audit on Alabama’s verification of whether SNF’s adequately performed background checks on employees, finding that the state didn’t do enough to ensure compliance with background check requirements. The summary is here (PDF) and the full report is here (PDF).
FROM THE NOTEBOOK:
- North Carolina’s Medicaid department announced a plan to cut Medicaid rates to providers following a $300 million gap between what the program needs and what the Legislature has appropriated. It’s important to note that, for now, this is mostly a political move by the agency to put pressure on the Legislature in an ongoing budget stalemate related to the Medicaid program between the Republican Legislature and Democratic Governor.
- Kansas’ Legislature is growing increasingly unhappy with the state’s board of nursing licensure.
- Just because Medicaid is cut, that doesn’t mean people no longer need health care. NPR looked who ends up eating those costs.
- Oracle rolled out a new AI-powered version of their EHR system.
- Building off KFF research, Healthcare Dive looked at the major hit that hospitals are facing following the One Big Beautiful Bill’s cuts to state directed payments.
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